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Ron Flavin brings his grants expertise to American Indian tribes in rural communities

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington State a $500,000 Distance Learning and Telemedicine Grant.

The Colville Indian Reservation land base covers 1.4 million acres in North Central Washington, occupied by more than 5,000 residents living in small communities or in rural settings.

The grant proposal was written by Ron Flavin, a business organizaiton strategist, who has had a 100 percent success rate with the USDA's Community Connect program and has previously obtained a $1.4 million award for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.

In other initiatives for American Indian Tribes, Flavin has worked with the Karuk Tribe in the Klamath River Rural Broadband Initiative to obtain a $1.1 million Community Connect grant award (the largest award that year and the only award made to a tribal entity) offered through the USDA. Funding was used to bring high-speed broadband Internet to the rural, isolated community Orleans in Northern California. Flavin led the research initiative and identified a potential opportunity with the State of California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). The CPUC is charged with bringing affordable, reliable high-speed broadband Internet to highly rural communities throughout the State of California. These efforts are carried out through the CPUC's California Advanced Service Fund (CASF) program.

Since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Federal Government through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has made major effort to promote the availability of telecommunications services to individuals living on tribal lands, including both Indian reservations and Alaskan Native lands.

According to Ron Flavin, "There are numerous grant opportunities available to American Indian Tribes who are located in rural communities to develop a more sophisticated telecommunications infrastructure. There is also enormous funding available for high-tech startups who intend to serve these rural communities."

Flavin's expertise has also resulted in the following grant awards:

—Secured $6.6 million to fund a telecommunications project in rural Northern California.—Wrote eight funded Carol M. White PEP proposals (out of only 60 awarded nationally) resulting in awards of more than $8.2 million in 2013.—Helped a startup to obtain $9.3 million to commercialize a new technology.—Secured $1.1 million to fund an innovative biomass demonstration project for a California start-up company.—Obtained $3 million to fund a tribal economic development project.—Assisted a state government in obtaining $7.7 million to fund a telecommunications project.—Wrote the only Rural Utilities Service (RUS) Community Connect funding proposal awarded to a tribal entity in 2011 and 2012 (each year only 16 about proposals were funded nationally out of more than 600 proposals received), securing individual awards in excess of $1 million each. In the last round of funding, out of more than 600 proposals reviewed, Flavin's proposal was the only one that unanimously received a perfect score from every reviewer.

To date, solely for the month of April 2014, Flavin has secured grants awards totaling $10.7 million. For more information on Flavin, visit www.rflavin.com or on Twitter @rflavin.

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